I have had good success hosting online FFA games. I create a game (FFA) and then join myself, and a few of my friends join. In the past I had 5 guys connected to my hosted game at once.
Just recently I hosted a FFA game, and my friend on the other end of the connection reports trouble with gameplay. He thinks its his graphics settings, so he sets eveything to LOW, but no improvement. Is it possible that the problem is on my end. I have a fairly good Internet connection, 5 Meg download, 512 Meg upload. My machine is a Pentium 4, 2.5 Ghz processor w/ 1G of Ram and an N-Vidia FX5500 256MB vid. card.

Any thoughts, is it on my end of the connection or his....?

It is not recommended to both play the game and host the server on the same machine especially when you have an older computer.

I would say the problem is on your end, try quiting out and see if the other players get better results.

I never had problems before, and I use to host 5 players including myself. My machine may be old, but its not that old and it falls in the specs for hosting a game. Recently I am just trying to host a game between myself and my friend across town. Maybe it was just a connection issue that night.....I will try again.
...what about Firmware 1.4 would that have changed anything for me?

DO I need a separate CD key to host a game and play the same game using separate PCs?

If you're running a listen server, you'll need CD-MKeys for both the server rig and your player rig. You do not need a CD-Key to run a dedicated server.

Thanks, I am running a "listen" server currently. I am interested in running a dedicated server. Is there good place to earn how to set up a dedicated server and the do's and don'ts. thanks

You could try here http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/112105592/m/9041020894
Or there are other posts in the server admin forum

Take a look on your computer ... C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Crytek\Far Cry\Support